But now there's a deal to weaken the sequester and allow more government spending over the next two years. Hatched by Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Patty Murray, the Democrat Chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, the most important takeaway is that the agreement will increase spending caps by $63 billion over the next two years.

This chart shows what will happen.

The second most important thing to understand is that the Murray-Ryan deal contains several tax hikes. But since politicians can't resist prevaricating, these provisions are being referred to as "user fees" and "offsetting receipts."

The most outrageous tax hike is the added levy on airline travel. Honest people call this an increase in the ticket tax. The folks in Washington call it an "Aviation security service fee."

There's also a tax hike on private pension plans, as well as additional taxes (oops, I mean "user fees") on trade.

You also won't be surprised to learn that the so-called spending cuts in the agreement are mostly fluff and gimmicks.

The Treasury Department and Justice Department have been told not to spend "unobligated balances" in their forfeiture funds, but that was money they presumably weren't going to spend anyway.

States, meanwhile, have been told they have to pay part of the cost of managing mineral leases on federal lands within their borders. Maybe someone can explain to me why payments from state governments to Washington count as a budget cuts.

And the agreement also assumes that Washington will do a better job of policing fraud in areas such as unemployment insurance and illegal utilization of handouts by prisoners. Those would be positive developments, to be sure, but one has to wonder why they weren't enforcing those laws already.

By the way, the aforementioned tax hikes and make-believe spending cuts are supposed to generate "savings" over 10 years that will "offset" the higher spending that will occur 2014 and 2015.